Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency. - John Updike

The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before, and he does it without destroying something else.

The dead teach this great lesson, which we are loathe to learn: we too will die.

Although this block of brick three-stories is just like the one he left, something in it makes him happy; the steps and windowsills seem to twitch and shift in the corner of his eye, alive. This illusion trips him. His hands lift of their own and he feels the wind on his ears even before, his heels hitting heavily on the pavement at first but with an effortless gathering out of a kind of sweet panic growing lighter and quicker and quieter, he runs. Ah: runs. Runs.